"Hear" about Living with Questions

Jonalyn and I spoke on reaching youth and Living with Questions in San Jose, CA, in August. This was the same weekend my book was released.

If you want to know the need students are facing today and how my book Living with Questions helps address that need, listen here: Living with Questions (mp3).

I also just found out this weekend that Living with Questions has started it's second printing! I'm stoked.

Living with Questions is released!!

Jonalyn and I spent the last week in the mountains of New Hampshire speaking several times a day at Camp Good News.

Just after we arrived I got an email: my book was in the warehouse and would be overnighted to me right away.

That did me no good. My porch in Steamboat received my book while I was on the other side of the country.

Then Friday I got another email: Living with Questions officially released!

Amazon says it won't be released till the end of September. Don't believe it. Expect those pre-orders to ship very soon!

So it's been an exciting week, speaking to students, answering their questions, and then hearing my book on the very same thing is released to the wide world.

Last night we flew back from Boston. Arriving home at 2AM, I found the yellow envelope from Zondervan. I opened it and peered my half asleep eyes inside. It was all shiney with a note of congratulations.

I'm thrilled this book available to the thousands of students we meet across our land.

In the quiet today, I signed several books to mail to those I love. I thought of my mother (to whom I dedicate it) and my grandfather. They were my two big cheerleaders and both of them are gone. And I so wanted them to be proud of this accomplishment, to see it, to hold it in their hands. It's such a bittersweet feeling when the ones who built so much into you from childhood aren't here to see another milestone. I look up into the grandstands and they just aren't there.

The ache of loneliness meets me again. But all is well, really. Their God is here.

Prayer under the Mesa

Last week, Jonalyn and I went out of town for some rest in the rolling slickrock of Moab, UT. While enjoying the sun and scenery, I got a call from my editor that the book needed be cut by 1/3 to fit with the book formatting.

This did not coincide with the contract and I immediately called my agent about what to do. My editor had already graciously re-edited my manuscript so I wouldn't have to. But that meant cutting out the personalized feel of the book as well as many anecdotal moments. That wouldn't do for me, in part, because that would only heap it upon the large pile of already impersonal apologetics books on the market. It's personalization is one thing that sets it apart.

I took a walk out of our campsite under the shadows of the mesas. Lady Jane, one of our corgis, fell into step beside me as I walked and walked to find a quiet place. And there I spoke with God.

I shared my frustration with him at the many, many re-writes to trim the book down to its length. I told him that had I known it would have needed to be 1/3 shorter, that I would have approached the book chapters a little differently.

He listened and waited for me to finish. I felt heard and that my frustration was on the table for him to consider. Would he even have an answer?

His first question back to me was not about edits. It was, "Whose book is this? And what is it's purpose?" Well, the purpose is to help wandering folks who are looking for some tidbits of an answer to live into. It is for those myriad of students who ask me for book recommendations to their questions. It is for those who are intellectually suffering but may not have the staying power to trudge through academia.

But whose book is this? Hmmmph. It was his. I thought it was mine for a moment, but it was his. And that only made sense, really. I wasn't writing the book to be anyone special. I was writing it for the students.

Then he seemed to reply, "Perhaps I want these new edits in the book to make it accessible for those I have in mind."

Fair enough. There, in the red rock, I matter-of-factly let him make his edits. If it will help, then let it help. If it required hacking out my journey to finding God that is in the midst of the book, then so be it.

It was a simple dialogue with God. Not much wrestling. We've been through similar things before and I know it is just easier to lay it out there and move forward.

I returned to camp, whistling at Jane to catch up, and ready to work on my edits in a few days.

On our drive out of Moab, I got a call from my editor again. "No need to edit. We made it fit!"

And just like that, my book remained in tact. Unfortunately, to keep the length down, they had to remove a lot of the cool formatting elements inside that would have spiced up the viewing pleasure of the reader. But I'm glad they didn't sacrifice content for some extra graphics and paragraph spacing... I'm unsure what the statistics are, but I don't think book format has helped people see God as much as the content of ideas.

So the book is steadily on track. And my final edits are due Sunday.

A decision was made

I wrote earlier about when I started to consider writing a thoughtful book for students and their questions....

One evening, my wife and I returned home and listened to our usual list of messages on the answering machine. Nancy was one of them, "Do you guys know a book I can recommend a teenager who is asking a lot of questions?"

I was hanging my jacket in the hallway closet. I turned around and in a semi-dramatic posture, bent on frustration, I said, "That's it. I'm writing a book for students!"

I lay in bed an hour later staring into the dark, remembering my student years. I remembered wrestling with questions and the long agonizing nights I stayed awake wondering if God was there. And if He was, why He seemed so disconnected from me. I remembered my fear of death. I remembered the strange looks from my friends whom I left back at the crossroads of an easier, less thoughtful, and less meaningful life. I remembered a deep compelling, the kind that drew Moses closer to a bush that didn't burn.

Then my mind was made. I would begin to write a book.

First Appearance

Google Alerts is a sweet little tool. Awhile back I inputed "dale fincher" as an alert search and Google sends me emails whenever my name shows up in a new place on the web.

Yesterday, I was notified of a page with the first appearance of my book, Living with Questions.



It will be released this September. You can read more info on it here.

I'm pumped to see this much progress from the publisher. I turned in the manuscript the end of January and am waiting to put the finishing touches of editing on it.

What prompted the beginning...

I resisted associating myself more exclusively as speaker for students. I already struggled with my perception as 'drama guy,' even though my experience and education also included a broader integration of philosophy, theology, and literature. So when people asked me about speaking to students, I perceived it as, "Hey, 'Youth Guy,' we know you don't have anything worth saying to adults, so how about talking to our kids instead." I'd say, "Yes, I can, BUT I can speak to adults as well." And I did. In fact, I spoke to adults much more than to students until two years ago.

Through youth invitations, I discovered intense and mature questions from students. I'd talk to them. My wife, Jonalyn, would talk to them. Helping them navigate some of their ideas, I found a more difficult question emerge, "Could you recommend a book that talks about these things?"

Ouch. I couldn't. We had looked through the books available. Most of them were not accessible to a teenage education. Still more, the ones that were, didn't deal with many of the questions we did. And even those did not answer questions the way we did.

I started seeing students as a group mature enough to deal with the hard questions. Many of them as mature as their parents when it came to facing life's puzzles. These kids were asking for a lifeline to walk into a wider view of life. They wanted something in their hands to read, mull over, wrestle with.

I started to think about a book.